Queen Victoria (1819-1901) - Pt 3/3

Victoria refused to live in London. She much preferred to stay in one of her country places, where she could keep politics at a distance. Here at Osborne, she worked dutifully enough at her desk, reading state papers. But if ministers came all the way from London, she might not even see them, just communicate with them via a private secretary. No wonder that when Gladstone was Prime Minister, he called Osborne the Great Enemy. On all her estates, she liked the company of her servants, notably a blunt-speaking man named John Brown. Brown was intensely loyal to the Queen. They became close. The government's problem with Brown was that he supported the Queen's reclusive lifestyle. He was protective of her and tended to be over-familiar with visiting ministers, who didn't take to being slapped on the back and occasionally ordered around. It was an arrangement that continually displeased ministers. Benjamin Disraeli, for one, resented having to trek around the country, attending Victoria wherever she happened to be. Visiting the Queen in those days can't have been a lot of fun. She didn't like heated houses, so most guests were left shivering. And then at mealtimes, she fell ravenously upon her food. And since the rule was that everything was cleared away when the Queen had finished, most guests were left hungry too. Disraeli found Balmoral particularly disagreeable. On his first visit there, he got a stomach upset. On his second, a severe chill. He asked to be excused any further invitations. But Disraeli was the Prime Minister who finally persuaded the Queen to re-enter public life. He had two tricks up his sleeve. One was flattery. When it comes to royalty, he said, you should lay it on with a trowel. And the other was India. Together, his courtly manners and his ambitions for the empire appealed to Victoria, and she happily adopted him as another of her older male advisers. If Albert's death had been the undoing of young Victoria, in her maturity she gained a new lease of life, thanks to India. It was the jewel in her crown. And in 1876, Benjamin Disraeli proposed that she take the title Empress of India. Now, that title was reserved for use with regard to India. But Victoria loved being called Empress so much that she used it whenever she felt like it. Although in her entire reign she never actually visited India, Victoria was fascinated by Indian culture and the affection of the Indian people for her. The Queen began to take Indian servants into her royal household. Perhaps the best known of these is this man, Abdul Karim. He taught her Urdu, and he served as her general adviser on Indian matters. And it's curious that, for all the pomp and the circumstance surrounding Victoria's reign, she herself was not too fastidious about social rank. She would happily take a nip of whisky with John Brown. Abdul Karim was the son of a prison pharmacist, but he was made welcome here at Osborne. As soon as Victoria became Empress of India, her life changed for the better. She attended state balls and she went on tours of the country. She won back the public's affection. By the time of the Golden Jubilee in 1887, she'd become the Queen they wanted, a semi-magical figure who symbolised the unity of a great empire. When she drove through the streets of London, huge crowds cheered her on. They seemed to have forgotten all their old resentments. Queen Victoria also became Europe's grandmother. Through her eldest daughter, Vicky, she was now related to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who would go to war with Britain in 1914. And her granddaughter, Alex, married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who, along with his family, would be murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. In one way or another, she was related to the royal houses of Norway, Sweden, Greece, Romania, Spain and Mexico. All over Osborne House, there are signs of just how important this family network was to Victoria. She herself had a reputation for being rather a stern mother. She saw herself as responsible for the moral development of her children. But that picture seems to say it all. She carried over the model of family life into her role as Queen, where she was the matriarch responsible for the welfare of her subjects, in return expecting their love and respect. By the end, she'd got both. Victoria died at Osborne on Tuesday 22nd January 1901. She was 81. As she lay dying, her grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm, knelt at her bedside and held her hand. Her long reign had shown that even a determined Queen could not stem the tide of parliamentary progress. But it had also shown that monarchy could be important as a symbol of nation and empire, setting the tone for political, social and family life. The day she died, she was much revered and much missed. As the novelist Henry James said, we all feel a bit motherless today.